


it’s hard to fight when the fight aint fair (i'll try)

by MayBeBrilliant



Series: Birthdays of S.H.I.E.L.D. [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers, Angst, Character Study, Daisy Johnson being angsty through the seasons, F/F, Season 5 Spoilers, Skye | Daisy Johnson-centric, Sort Of, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27875038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayBeBrilliant/pseuds/MayBeBrilliant
Summary: Basically a look at Daisy being angsty through the seasons, with some Skimmons.  Introspective, a bit of a character study. Daisy centric.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Series: Birthdays of S.H.I.E.L.D. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040905
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	it’s hard to fight when the fight aint fair (i'll try)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sadtunes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadtunes/gifts).



> Vi,  
> Happy birthday!!  
> We have a lot in common I think, it's really fun to talk to you. You always make me feel so welcome. 
> 
> I'm so sorry this is a day late, I just didn't have a moment at the computer yesterday. That being said, I hope you enjoy this angsty Skimmons! 
> 
> From the bottom of my heart, happy birthday and I hope you had a fantastic day! 💙💙💙💙💙
> 
> A bit about the fic, it's set in 5 12 where Daisy fights the other inhuman in Kasuis's arena.

* * *

Daisy Johnson stood ready to go out into the arena, into the insane circle where she would be forced to kill or be killed, for entertainment’s sake. She was no stranger to fighting, she mused, as she tied the strips of leather around her arms and pulled her hood up. This was different. She was being forced, so that Kaius could sell her off to the highest bidder. There was nothing she could do. She was ready to fight. She had always been ready to fight.

Mary Sue Poots was a fighter. She’d known that since she was a tiny girl in the orphanage, being broken time after time but always getting back up. She changed her name to Skye, because that was something that was _hers_ , that she could control. She’d been adopted a few times, and nothing described the pain she felt at being sent back every time, without fail. Or so she thought. Finding her parents had been her dream, ever since she could remember. The realisation that she never would hadn’t hit her until much, much later. But even then, she kept fighting because that was all she knew how to do.

Skye was a fighter. So she joined the Rising Tide, determined that if she was going to be subjected to a life without parents to guide her, love her, she could just as well disappear and do something, anything to help the world that had broken her and cast her aside without looking back. Working from the shadows, she fought with everything she had in her. Nothing could shake her from her goal.

Then SHIELD found her, and her life was turned upside down. Again. She found herself getting to know the people, getting _attached_ to them. She never allowed people into her life, because if they were there, they could just as easily walk out. So she carried on working for the Rising Tide, trying to push away the faint strands of her conscience telling her to help these shattered people.

They found out. She fought them, to no avail. She found that she didn’t want to.

She gained their trust, slowly, surely, and found that finally, she might _belong_ somewhere. This was dangerous, they’d been breaking down her personal walls with gentle, caring blows. She was falling, she couldn’t stop herself.

She got shot. That was the hardest thing that had ever happened to her. She was dying, she knew it. She fought it, to no avail. In the end, it was the people she hadn’t wanted to trust that saved her. She couldn’t deny it anymore, they were her friends. Maybe even more. She’d started to hope that something might come from all this.

Then HYDRA came. Ward was HYDRA. Ward betrayed them. She had let him in and he’d callously used the very thing that she’d thought would keep her safe to hurt her, hurt her team. Friends. So she fought. No longer was she the lost little girl struggling to make her way in the world. She’d found a home, and this asshole had taken it from her. She was going to _fight_.

It didn’t help. Two of the people she’d come to consider, against her will, as her closest friends, had been thrown out of the plane and left to die at the bottom of the ocean. One of them had almost been broken by the ordeal, the other had permanent scars that no amount of fighting for would heal. Still, she fought, because that was something she could do.

Skip forward. One of her friends has permanent brain damage, another is working undercover. She finds that she misses her much more than she should, but she won’t let herself consider what that might mean. The man she has secretly, in the furthest corner of her mind, come to consider as a father was acting strangely, hiding something. She fought to help him. He fought to help himself. Neither succeeded.

The Obelisk. That’s something important. She doesn’t know what it is, only that it can hurt the people on the Bus. Her friends. Her family? No, she’d already let them in too much. They find clues toward that, some kind of an alien map. Jemma comes back from HYDRA where she was working undercover. Fighting to keep her emotion under wraps, to hide that spark of joy in her stomach at the sight of her is much harder than she ever thought, Skye muses.

Coulson is getting worse. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, only that it aches to see him like this, a shadow of his former self. The ‘Doctor’, the man who murdered so many people, is a monster. She hopes she never has to meet him. They find that the map is one of an underground city, where the Obelisk has some value. Fighting is getting harder, but she forces herself because nobody else will fight for her.

That man, that _monster,_ is her father. She doesn’t believe it. Her name is Skye, not Daisy. She doesn’t have to believe a word he says. She shoots Ward, and finds that she isn’t fighting so much for herself as for her team now.

They find the alien city. They put the Obelisk, which they now know to be the Diviner, in place. Skye and Raina. And Trip. He tries to save her, but is killed. Killed. Trip is dead. She can’t even dwell on the fact that someone died to save _her_ , because something is happening to her. A black cocoon, covering her when mist shoots out of the Diviner. She can’t move, can’t fight-

There was an earthquake. She was in the middle of it, without a scratch. That isn’t possible. And yet, it happened. Something has changed about her. _She caused the earthquake._ There is something extremely wrong with her, she can hurt the people she cares about even more now. How can she expect to stay here? They’ll kick her out, imprison her, and that’s good. She deserves it. She’s a freak, she’ll hurt them. She can’t stay here, never mind how she longs to.

Fitz. He lies to everyone about her blood samples, says she’s normal. She knows she’s not. He doesn’t seem to care, which is an impossibly new thing. Why does he care so much about her? She certainly doesn’t deserve it. She fights him, but ultimately she’s so happy, so grateful.

Jemma doesn’t feel the same. She thinks that Skye is some kind of a freak now, or even worse, she’s scared of her. Skye knows that she’ll never be able to be with her now. Not after this. (Because it’s pointless to deny it now, she’s hopelessly in love with her.)

She is confused, struggling. Mack and Bobbi are hiding something, Hunter is gone. Could those two be connected? She’d thought that Bobbi and Hunter loved each other still, she’d never imagined something like this could happen. Her new...disability? Everyone called them powers, as if she was somehow lucky to have them. Ha. If only they knew how much pain they were causing her. She fought to keep it all inside her, not to let them explode outwards like they wanted to. She fractured her arms, but that was better than hurting everyone she cared about, wasn’t it?

She’s put in a safe house, with gloves designed to keep her powers from hurting her or other people. Jemma made them. Even in the midst of her tangled feelings toward the other woman, Skye can admire her genius. The gloves hurt, but they stop her powers.

In the end, they don’t help. She accidentally unleashes her powers, killing people and flattening a section of forest. Utterly horrified, she agrees to go with Gordon, the mysterious man who claims to be able to help her. Anything is better than trying to fight her powers on her own.

At the Afterlife, where Gordon takes her, she learns a bit about her powers. She meets her mother. She is ecstatic over this, her mother is everything she could have wished for. And an inhuman herself, she understands what Skye is going through. Cal, her father, is also much nicer than she had previously seen. Could this be the rest of her life? Happy, with both her parents. She hardly dares to believe it. She fights the feelings stirring up in her.

Everything is suddenly wrong. Her mother is fighting against SHIELD, and kills Raina. Skye knows, suddenly, that she was fighting for the wrong side. It shatters her. This person, her biological mother, killed innocent people. The person who’d she’d fought, hurt so many times, was more a mother that Jiaying could ever be. May. How will she ever forgive her?

She is captured by her mother’s forces, but Mack saves her. Her own mother tries to kill her, until Cal snaps Jiaying’s neck. Skye bitterly thinks that she should have seen this coming. Her, happy? She should have known that when she finally, after so many years of searching, found her parents, one of them would turn out to kill the other one. Granted, she couldn’t have foreseen exactly that, but she should have known that her parents wouldn’t be perfect. It was her. She was the common factor in all the death and destruction that seemed to follow her around like a bloody trail.

Coulson loses his hand, and Skye loses part of herself when her father’s mind is wiped to save everyone. To add to all of this, Jemma, the girl she loves, is sucked into the Monolith, and nobody knows where she is.

Four months later, she still isn’t found.

Skye changes her name to Daisy. Daisy Johnson. To honour her father and even her dead mother. After all, without them, who knows what would’ve become of her and her new powers? She probably would have been dead. Or better off, she doesn't know. Anyway, the name feels _right_.

Daisy Johnson is a fighter. She carries on, even though the weight of everything is crushing her. Jemma is still gone. Daisy fights to get her back, but slowly begins to lose hope. She is heartbroken, but that’s happened so many times in her twenty seven years that she knows how to deal with it by now. She fights.

She looks for Lincoln, the Inhuman who first taught her that her powers were a good thing. She starts to assemble a team, the Secret Warriors.

Fitz has an idea of how to bring Jemma back. Daisy won’t give in to the stirrings of hope fluttering in her chest. There’s so much that can still go wrong. She holds the portal of the monolith open, and Jemma comes through. Did she do it? Could she possibly have saved the girl she loves? It turns out that Jemma needs to go back, because of a man there that she loves. Daisy is crushed, but she vows to help her, even if it’s just as a friend.

Lash, the inhuman who has been killing people, turns out to be May’s ex-husband, Andrew Garner. She’s shocked, but also has so much more to focus on. Fighting Lash was a priority, now it seems helping Andrew is more important. She keeps fighting with her team of Inhumans. Lash almost kills Lincoln, but May manages to calm him down. Daisy has a deep respect for the person she’s come to regard as her mother. This woman had taught her how to fight.

Coulson's friend, (lover?) Price, is killed by Ward, and Coulson is determined to get revenge. Jemma is tortured until Fitz agrees to help HYDRA bring Hive back from the other planet. Daisy still has nightmares of Jemma’s screams, seeing her tortured face over and over in her sleep. It makes her sick.

Coulson enters the portal to Maveth, and Daisy is worried sick over her father. Everything is getting too much, why did she let so many people into her life? They were bound to get hurt, hurting her more in the process.

She just had no idea how much.

When everyone got back from the alien planet, she was so glad. Nothing was an impending disaster anymore. She could relax for a moment, stop fighting for a second. Coulson had killed Ward, and Jemma was back safely. (Her heart soared at the news that even though Jemma didn’t love her back, she was at least alright.)

Her team of Inhumans go to investigate someone who’s been stealing weapons to the police, somehow managing to recruit a new member for their team. Yo-yo, as she was nicknamed. Daisy immediately took a liking to her fiery spirit. Everything was more or less fine. It was a good feeling. Daisy was back in her comfort zone, fighting to protect the people she loved. She didn’t know how to do anything else.

Then everything started to go wrong. Again. Bobbi and Hunter, her siblings in all but blood, had to leave. The team, (were they even a team anymore? They’d been fractured and broken so many times, it was hard to tell if they were even a bit whole at this point) saw them off with a Spy’s Goodbye. Daisy fought not to cry, fought to be strong for them.

She just wants to sit in her bunk, shut out the world, stop fighting. But there’s so much to be done, so much. The Watchdogs, a group of Inhuman haters, are getting more followers by the day. There’s a new Inhuman, one who can see a person’s death when someone touches him. Daisy gets this _privilege_. She sees somebody, from her team, dying in space, blowing up. It’s agonising, to know she can’t do anything about it, can’t fight anyone to prevent it from happening.

Hive. He’s in her blood, in her mind. Nobody else knows. Her team suspects everyone, finally seeing it’s her. She causes an earthquake, bringing down the base behind her. She feels no remorse. This is what she was supposed to do, her single purpose in life. The team doesn’t matter. Only Hive.

Mack tries to get her to go back to the team. He doesn’t understand, doesn’t see what’s right and what’s wrong. His life doesn’t matter, she almost takes it when she fights him. Hive is all that matters, the single most important thing in her life. So when he needs Kree blood, she offers her own, knowing that she’s recently been injected with it. If it kills her, that means nothing. Hive will have won, which is the important thing.

Lash. A power in her chest. Something rising up. She’s free. She didn’t even realise she was a captive until she got out. Lash is the cure, the only thing that can save people from Hive’s sway. She knows that he was completely wrong now, sees it, an infinity too late. She’s already hurt everyone she loves, hurt them badly. She can never forgive herself.

Lash is the cure. Lash is dead.

She begs Hive to take her back. There, she could die and the team could have a reason to hate her. Instead, Lash had made her immune, and Hive overpowers her. The warhead that would spread the primitive Inhuman pathogen is ready.

Then, Lincoln, the boy who helped her find herself again after she got her powers, who joined SHIELD because of her, who is like her brother, sacrifices himself to save her. That’s two people, she thinks distantly. Two people who died because of her. It was supposed to be her. She was supposed to pay for everything she did under Hive’s sway, die knowing she saved her family. Instead, she is left living, living with this crushing guilt and misery.

She goes on the run. She fights her way out and flees.

Six months later, she still won’t go back and the team, previously like her family, have almost given up on her. Good, she thinks. That’s the way it should be. She misses them, misses them so much it physically hurts. But she doesn’t go back. Not even when she’s crying, alone in the night, desperate for the comfort of her mother’s hand or Jemma's gentle touch. No.

She won't go back. Not even for Jemma. This was the thing that crippled her, probably the most. The missed opportunities. She could have been happy. She could have scraped up the courage to ask if Jemma felt the same way that she did, could have been with her. It was a possibility, after all. But no. She didn’t deserve to be happy, didn’t deserve Jemma. She was amazing, so smart and capable. She’d never come close to killing a member of her team. No, it was better this way. Better to distance herself from everyone and everything, to try not to care. And to fight.

The newspapers nicknamed her Quake, because that was what her powers did. Bitterly, she thought back to the first time she’d caused an earthquake. How scared she’d been then. Now it was other people who were scared, the Watchdogs.

As was always the case, a new crisis popped up. Daisy wasn’t done grieving Lincoln, but now she had no time. Lucy Bower, an apparent ghost, was wreaking havoc wherever she went. Daisy knew that SHIELD was investigating this, but she had to see for herself. Better to let SHIELD think she wasn’t, though. Fight from the shadows. That sounded familiar.

She meets the infamous Ghostrider, him explaining his apparent debt to the devil. She agrees to work with him, Robbie Reyes, but on no accounts with SHIELD. She fights the urge to go back and apologise, to lay herself out in front of her family and beg for forgiveness. That wasn’t how it worked. They wouldn’t forgive her anyway. Keep fighting.

There is a new director at SHIELD, a man called Mace. Daisy feels indignant on Coulson’s part, but won’t go back. There’s no reason to, everyone would just treat her like shit. (She knows, deep down, that this isn't true. She just wants them to _want_ to treat her like shit, to hurt her like she hurt them.)

She wonders how easy it would be to throw herself off the edge of the roof, just fall, let the winds caress her body until they didn’t. Oblivion. But she doesn’t. Whatever is going on in the world, it needs her. She sees that now. She can’t just leave all her responsibilities behind.

She forces Jemma to help her after she gets badly injured. She feels terrible, like this is just another thing to add to the list of why Jemma hates her. Jemma seems to feel differently though, begging Daisy to come back home. Home. SHIELD had never been her home, it was just the people there. She wanted to tell Jemma that, but it was dangerously close to admitting her feelings. Admitting that she spent lonely nights wrapped up in thoughts of Jemma, her smile, her laughter.

Jemma disappears. Daisy is out of her mind with worry. It’s apparently only a secret mission Mace sent her on, but Daisy doesn’t believe that. She can’t focus without Jemma there, she feels as if she lost a part of herself when she left. Coulson, Fitz and Robbie Reyes are also gone. How did this happen? She’s losing everyone closest to her, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. She can’t think, can’t fight. And if she can’t fight, what can she do?

As it turns out, AIDA, the robot that Fitz helped Radcliffe build, is evil. She used the Darkhold, a mysterious book, to grow even more intelligent, thus overpowering her creators. Daisy is scared now. Scared for her family and what will become of them. AIDA is a real threat, and grows even more so when Daisy finds out she kidnapped her mom and replaced her with an LMD. What the hell? When did technology get so advanced? Daisy fights AIDA to no avail. She still can’t shake the sheer terror of walking into a room filled with dozens of copies of herself.

She and Jemma were the only ones who weren’t LMDs. Daisy didn’t know who to turn to, who to trust-

Jemma.

It was always Jemma.

She kissed Daisy in the middle of that hallway, forgave her, laid her soul bare. Daisy returned the favour, not believing that this was actually happening. She’d wanted this, wanted Jemma, for so long, and now that she had her, it felt impossible.

But it wasn’t. Jemma loved her, completely, with all her flaws. Daisy felt she was the luckiest girl in the world, to have the love of this astounding person. This woman, who had been through so much. Daisy had hurt her so many times, and yet she still found it within herself to love Daisy. Everything felt lighter, just for a moment.

She knew it wouldn’t last.

She was right.

What happened next...Daisy smiles a small, bitter smile while remembering.

The framework.

The mystical, ‘magical’ place Radcliffe designed to make people happier. Ha. Everyone who’d gone in there had lost something of themselves, something precious. May was HYDRA, Coulson was a schoolteacher. Jemma was apparently dead, but she couldn’t be. That was impossible, she’d seen her girlfriend (could she call her that? Was that overstepping a boundary?) entering the framework right beside her. Daisy was so confused, scared, hurt.

Oh and the worst part, Ward was her boyfriend.

Ward, the asshole who’d betrayed his team, threw Fitz and Jemma out of a plane, tortured Bobbi, hurt everyone she’d cared about. She felt the hatred rise up in her as she looked at him.

But this wasn’t Ward.

In this world, he’d joined the Inhuman resistance. Everything was fucked up and impossible, even more so when Fitz, her brother, one of the kindest men she’d ever met, shot a woman in cold blood.

This wasn't real. That was what she kept telling herself. It was the only way to cope, to keep herself from giving up, letting go.

So many blows. She'd been broken so many times she hardly remembered what it felt like to be whole. But she stood up. She kept going. Because she was a fighter.

No powers, however, was really hard to deal with. Except when May brought her the terrigen crystals, and she dared to hope that May was starting to remember. Her mother, even when she had no idea who Daisy was, was still helping her so much. Her mom was fighting for her, so she fought for her mom.

Finally. _Finally_. Quaking AIDA out of the window felt _good_ , and while she knows it won’t permanently end her, it definitely slowed her down.

They got out. Out of the framework.

Daisy hardly dared to believe it. Of course, it wasn't without its own wounds. Nobody made it unscathed. Fitz probably had it the worst, and Jemma. He'd shot her, and he'd probably never forgive himself.

Daisy knew how that felt.

And Jemma…Jemma had been shot by her best friend, a boy who she knew so well it was like they had a psychic link. It was fine now, but that kind of thing leaves an emotional scar. A deep one. Daisy was more worried about her girlfriend than herself. Huh, interesting. Somewhere along the line her own life had ceased to be important. She would gladly sacrifice herself if it meant the people she loved would be fine.

They'd sat down to a meal in a diner. It'd been nice. Everyone was still recovering, but it was mostly fine. Daisy couldn't remember how long it had been since she'd been with her whole family, just sitting there, not fighting.

Of course, something had happened. Something _always_ happened. She just couldn't have guessed what it would be this time.

Aliens.

Why did it have to be aliens? That was about the only thing that _hadn't_ happened to them so far.

They'd been kidnapped, all of them except Fitz. She didn't even want to think about what that would do to him, already being so fragile after the framework. He’d never been able to deal with trauma easily, but this? This was a whole new level.

Because they were apparently in space now.

A place called the Lighthouse, where Kree ruled because Daisy had apparently blown up the world at some stage. She was insanely confused, how did that even happen? At the Lighthouse, Kasius ruled over everyone, humans being fed and held captive like mice.

Inhumans were a different story. They were forced to fight, which was how Daisy, now known as the Destroyer of Worlds, found herself about to enter the arena to bloodthirsty cheers.

And as she thought back to all these times she’d fought, for herself, her family, the world, she realised that yes, she was a fighter. So if Kasius wanted a fight, she was damn well going to give it to him.

What he didn’t understand was what she was fighting for. He thought she only did it to survive another day, to kill.

He was wrong.

She fought for the people she loved. She fought to protect. May, who’d been her mother since Jiaying had failed at that. Coulson, who’d made her the agent and person she was today. Mack, Fitz, Hunter, Elena, Bobbi, who were like her siblings, who caught her when she stumbled.

And Jemma. Jemma, the girl she loved. Who loved her back, despite all that Daisy had done to hurt her. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep her safe, happy. And who knows, if she got out of this, maybe Jemma wouldn’t be her girlfriend any more. Maybe, just maybe she’d say yes to an important question Daisy wanted to ask her.

With this knowledge in mind, Daisy straightened up, a cold fire in her eyes.

Daisy Johnson, Destroyer of Worlds, was a fighter.

And she was damn well ready to fight.


End file.
